Saturday, December 12, 2009

Freezer challenge

I was reading a fellow blogger's post and was inspired that we should have a freezer challenge. My fellow blogger is having (and had last year) a pantry challenge. As she explains it, this is the, "thing where you don't buy any groceries and only eat what's in your kitchen as of...right now." She does it for a week or two to get things back on track.

I ran this idea by Jeremy.

"We should have a freezer challenge! We could make meals for the next month that use ingredients from the freezer!" (Note: that would be the royal we, as in Jeremy will be doing all the cooking)

"Hmmmm," was his reply.

Of course we realized pretty quickly it wasn't that practical. For one thing, we couldn't make a meal from the freezer every day because we don't eat that much. And we can't (or at least I won't) just eat a bowl of thawed corn or thawed strawberries. Most things in the freezer are ingredients to go in bigger dishes.

So perhaps we're not talking about a challenge, but about being more intentional. We've got plenty of food in the freezer (as well as canned) so we shouldn't have to buy as much food. Of course, there is the problem that there is so much in the freezer and it's so disorganized that we don't even know what's in there anymore!

In any case, we've had several intentional meals this last week using freezer and canned foods.

Jeremy dug out a lovely venison steak which he put under the broiler. He made this incredible marinade for it with fish sauce, whiskey, tamari, sesame seed oil, and pepper. We only ate a couple pieces of that, so for the next meal Jeremy cut up some pieces to put into a fabulous stroganoff (including our own shiitake mushrooms, onions, fish sauce, roasted red peppers from the freezer, and fusili pasta).There was still more, so the venison next showed up in a quiche, as well as roasted red peppers from the freezer, tomatoes from our CSA, salsa, cheddar & Gruyere, and the other usual quiche ingredients.

Here's the quiche:

(accompanied by blue chips found in the pantry and some sprouts.)

After this Jeremy whipped up a pizza. This had roasted kale (from the freezer), mozzarella, Italian sausage, and roasted garlic.

Then he was really inspired! He browned some mutton he had picked up at the farmer's market a few months back. He popped that in the slow cooker with chicken broth from the freezer and hominy from Native Harvest(which we've had lying around forever) Then he added some sauteed onions and garlic, celery, fish sauce, red wine, and miso and let that cook overnight. It smelled really good. It really cooked down and thickened so we served it over rice. It was incredibly tasty.

Jeremy is hoping to use up some corn and fruit next. Corn pudding? Smoothies? Cobbler? We will let you know what springs up next as we dive further into the freezer.

Your Homesteader

This is the blog formerly known as “Northwest Meets Midwest,” where I shared about the absurdities and adventures of living in the Midwest (having moved here from the Northwest). But really, this blog has been more and more a story of how we’ve fallen into urban farming and homesteading. So read on and enjoy our adventures in canning, preserving, mushroom-growing, local/organic fanaticism, chicken raising, designing and constructing, sewing, and attempting a little self-sufficiency in our corner of Minneapolis.